Rhodes and Yinsen left near ten.
Rhodes walked out with a cheerful stagger, while Yinsen left with the quiet joy of a survivor experiencing good company for the first time in months.
Leon watched their tail lights vanish down the drive.
He walked back inside and crashed onto the sofa facing the massive windows.
The Pacific Ocean was locked in its usual nightly routine, presenting a vastness that made human concerns feel wonderfully small.
Leon let his mind drift as he watched the dark tide crest and fall.
Behind him, the house was quiet save for Pepper’s distant movements in the kitchen and Tony lingering by the hallway.
Tony kept looking back and forth between the two of them, his face tight with the awkward friction of wanting to say something he hadn’t yet figured out how to voice.
“Hey.” Tony crossed to the sofa and sat beside him, dropping his voice without preamble.
“You mentioned earlier we were going to deal with Obadiah tonight.
What are we going to do?” He cut his eyes toward the kitchen.
“And Pepper can’t know — she’ll call it too dangerous and threaten to resign again.”
“She always says that.”
“She always means it in the moment.
When are we—”
“When she leaves.” Leon was still watching the water.
“Obadiah is still at the industrial park.
His office light is on.” A pause.
“He’s now—”
He stopped.
A subtle change crossed his features.
It wasn’t quite panic, but rather the distinct, calculated refocus of a man whose internal radar had just picked up something beyond the room’s walls.
“—damn it.” He stood.
“Tony.
Now.”
He grabbed Tony by the arm.
“Now?” Tony had approximately half a second to process this before Leon was steering him toward the front door.
“What did you—”
“He’s making a call.
We need to go.”
As they cleared the doorway, Leon turned his head toward the kitchen: “Pepper — Tony and I are going for a walk.
Back later!”
Pepper’s voice, from somewhere near the refrigerator: “Hmm?
Okay!”
The door closed behind them.
Tony, keeping his voice low while Leon pulled him down the front steps: “What did you see?”
“He’s contacting the Ten Rings.”
Tony went quiet for the rest of the three-second flight to Stark Industrial Park.
The rest of the office building had long since gone dark, leaving only Obadiah’s windows illuminated.
The top floor glowed through the towering glass, a brilliant beacon visible from afar.
It had the piercing brightness of a space where someone was hard at work, utterly indifferent to onlookers.
Either that, or he had no idea he was being watched from this angle.
They hovered outside at window level.
Inside, Obadiah sat at his desk with his back to the glass, facing a monitor.
The audio came through the window easily enough — Leon’s hearing had no trouble with it, and by the angle of Tony’s head, he’d placed himself close enough to catch it too.
“—because of your commission,” the voice from the screen was saying, “our leader is dead.
We want compensation before we discuss anything further.”
Obadiah’s voice was level and cold: “You let Tony get away.
And now you want to be compensated.
I told your people to make sure his body was unrecoverable.
How did they manage to fail at that?”
“That’s a separate matter from what we’re owed.”
“Is it.”
“It is.
Pay the compensation, or we take what we know about Tony Stark to the people who would be most interested.
The market for that kind of information is strong right now.”
Tony’s jaw had tightened.
Leon glanced at him, then back at the window.
Obadiah: “You’re threatening to cut off your own weapons supply.”
Terrorist: “Mr.
Stark shut down the weapons department today.
That supply was already gone.” A beat, letting that land.
“Pay the compensation or don’t.
But if you don’t, we contact Tony Stark’s people directly and let them draw their own conclusions about who commissioned his assassination.
I think they’ll be generous.”
Silence from Obadiah’s side of the screen.
Long enough that the tension was palpable even from outside.
Then the change came.
Something left Obadiah’s posture — the rigidity of it, the barely-held anger — and something else settled in instead, smooth and arranged.
When he spoke again, his voice had warmth in it.
“You’re right. The source of this chapter is g.com.
Of course you want compensation.
You’ve been patient, and I haven’t acknowledged that reasonably.” A pause while he smiled.
“I accept.
Completely.
But I have one condition before we finalize the arrangement.”
The voice on the screen, brightened immediately: “Name it.”
“I’ll arrange for Tony to make another trip abroad.
A situation he can’t ignore — Stark weapons on an active battlefield, the company’s name in the press for the wrong reasons.
He won’t be able to resist.” Obadiah leaned slightly forward.
“When he goes, you finish the job.
No loose ends.
I’ll deliver a full shipment of Stark arms as payment.”
“The Ten Rings will not disappoint you a second time.”
“Excellent.” Obadiah reached for the screen.
“Then we understand each other.”
The call ended with a soft tone.
Obadiah sat very still in the sudden quiet of the empty office.
The warm expression on his face cooled degree by degree, and what replaced it was something that had been underneath it the whole time, waiting.
He stood — and even standing, even alone, there was a quality of contained force in him that made the room feel smaller.
He swept everything off his desk with one arm.
Grabbed his mouse and threw it hard against the wall.
The sound it made was significant.
“Idiots.” The word came out like a pressure release.
“They couldn’t even hold onto a drunk playboy and his tin suit.”
Leon glanced at Tony.
Tony gave him a look that meant: yes, I’ve heard everything I need to hear.
Leon placed his hand on the edge of the floor-to-ceiling window panel — at the narrow gap between glass and frame — and pressed.
The corner lifted.
He got his fingers fully under it, tilted it outward with careful, steady force, and then simply removed the entire panel from its housing and set it to one side.
Silently.
Without a crack.
Tony stared at this for approximately one second, and then there wasn’t time to stare at it, because Leon was already stepping through the open frame.
“My apologies for the interruption,” Leon said.
Obadiah’s roar cut off mid-syllable.
He spun.
The cold sweat arrived visibly — on his forehead, in the sudden paleness of his face — and he took one full step backward before his training overrode the instinct and he stopped himself.
“Tony.” His eyes moved between them.
“Leon.”
Tony stood right behind Leon in the window frame, his expression locked tight around a secret or an outburst that was only going to remain bottled up for as long as he could physically stand it.
Leon said, simply: “We heard the call, Obadiah.
All of it.” He nodded toward the screen.
“Is there anything you’d like to say?”
The pause lasted perhaps three seconds.
Leon could see Obadiah running through options, evaluating, calculating.
The panic was there — genuine, for just a moment — and then the calculation reached a result and the panic was pressed down and covered over.
Obadiah raised both hands slowly.
“Leon.” His voice was back to the warm register, the one he used at board meetings and charity dinners.
“It’s late.
You two should be at home.” His right hand drifted down toward the desk, almost casually.
“What happened just now — there is context you don’t have.
There’s a reason for all of this.
If you’ll let me explain—”
He opened the desk drawer and came out with a pistol.
Loaded it in one practiced motion.
Leveled it at them.
“Step back.
Both of you.
Hands where I can see them.”
Tony moved.
Not away — forward, one step, planting himself between the gun and Leon.
His hands went up.
His expression didn’t change.
Obadiah looked at him for a moment, and something in his face shifted — not softened, but adjusted.
“Still protecting the boy.” He shook his head.
“After everything.
Tony, you really are something.”
“Obadiah.” Tony’s voice was very quiet.
“I trusted you.”
“I trusted you more than almost anyone.”
“I know that too.” Obadiah stepped closer, the gun steady.
“I’m genuinely touched.
And since you’ve heard what you’ve heard tonight, I think we can expose the performance.” His expression settled into something that had been underneath the warmth all along.
“Tony, you have been an extraordinarily useful asset.
For thirty years.
Your father and I built this company together, and then he died and the company passed to you — a child, and then a young fool, and then a spectacular fool — and I managed it, and built it, and kept it running through every disaster you created, and received a salary for the trouble.
Not equity.
A salary.”
He took another step.
“And then you brought that boy into the house.” His eyes moved briefly to Leon.
“An outsider.
And half the company goes to him in the will, like it’s the most natural thing in the world, while I — the man who actually built everything alongside your father — get nothing.”
Tony said nothing.
“You were supposed to die in Afghanistan,” Obadiah said.
“Simple and clean.
The Ten Rings were paid, the story was written.
And then your brother” — the word came out poisoned — “goes missing in his adventure seeing the world, and everything resolves itself beautifully.” His voice had gone flat and precise.
“Instead, you escaped.
And he came back.
And now you’re standing in my office at night having heard a private conversation, and the math has become quite simple.”
He closed the remaining distance.
The muzzle touched Tony’s forehead.
Tony closed his eyes.
“Go ahead, Leon,” he said.
“As you say.”
The words and the movement were simultaneous — Leon was simply there, having been somewhere else the fraction of a second before, and his hand was around Obadiah’s throat.
Not squeezing, exactly.
Just closed.
The gun had already fallen.
Obadiah’s face went red.
His feet left the floor.
His eyes, at eye level with Leon now, held a quality that was entirely new in them — something past calculation, past tactics, past the smooth management of outcomes that had served him for thirty years.
He grabbed at Leon’s wrist with both hands and found nothing to work with.
Leon looked at him for a moment.
Then he walked to the window and let go.
From several floors below, after a brief interval, came a sound that settled the matter conclusively.
Splat!
Leon walked back to Obadiah’s desk, found a data cable in the drawer, and connected it from his phone to the computer port.
“Jarvis.” He spoke quietly to the empty room.
“I’ve got a direct connection to an executive terminal.
No external network — you’ll need to work through my phone.
Collect everything on this machine.
Financial records, communications, anything that touches the Ten Rings or the Afghanistan commission.” He paused.
“Then hand it to the authorities.
Anonymously.
The narrative is that Obadiah Stane, facing imminent exposure for conspiracy to commit murder, took his own live.”
“Understood, Master Leon.
I’ll have everything compiled within the hour.”
While JARVIS worked, Leon straightened, smoothed his jacket, and turned around.
Tony was still standing where he’d been, looking at the space where Obadiah had been standing.
His hands were at his sides.
Leon crossed the room and put a hand on his shoulder.
Tony didn’t move.
“It’s done,” Leon said.
A long moment passed.
“Yeah,” Tony muttered.
His tone was careful and hollow.
Leon kept his hand on his shoulder and said nothing for a while.
Then:
“Go home.
Sleep.
And this week, if you need to not think about this for a few hours—” he paused, “—the cover girls are right there.”
Tony’s expression went through something complicated and came out the other side looking almost, almost like the version of Tony Stark that laughed at things.
“You kid,” he said, and shook his head slowly.
They left the office the way they’d entered it.
Behind them, the missing window panel stood against the wall of the building, waiting patiently for someone to explain it.